Opportunities to acquire foundational number sense: A quantitative comparison of popular English and Swedish textbooks

In this paper, we present analyses of popular grade one textbooks, one from each of England and Sweden. Focused on Foundational Number Sense, we examine how each book’s tasks facilitate children’s learning of those number-related competences that require instruction and which underpin later mathematical learning. Analyses identified both similarities and differences. Similarities lay in books’ extensive opportunities for children to recognise and write numbers and undertake simple arithmetical operations. However, neither offered more than a few tasks related to estimation or simple number patterns. Differences lay in the Swedish book’s greater emphases on different representations of number, quantity discrimination and relating numbers to quantity, highlighting conceptual emphases on number. The English book offers substantially more opportunity for students to count systematically, highlighting procedural emphases

Swedish teachers’ perspectives on parental involvement in children’s early learning of number

In this paper, we present results of an interview study of Swedish teachers’ views on parental involvement in year one children’s learning of number. Interview transcripts were subjected to a data-driven inductive analysis that identified two broad categories of parental involvement which, according to teachers, may have influence on children’s learning of number. Firstly, there were indirect involvements concerning the ways in which parents convey messages, both positive and negative, about school and mathematics in general. Secondly, there were direct number-related practices, falling into two broad categories. The first of these concerned formal activities, such as homework, which tended to dichotomise teachers. The second, largely hypothetical, concerned the exploitation of everyday informal situations and number-related games with the potential to facilitate children becoming friends with numbers

Number of addictive substances used related to increased risk of unnatural death: A combined medico-legal and case-record study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Substance use disorders have repeatedly been found to lead to premature death, i.e. drug-related death by disease, fatal intoxications, or trauma (accidents, suicide, undetermined suicide, and homicide). The present study examined the relationship between multi-drug substance use and natural and unnatural death.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>All consecutive, autopsied patients who had been in contact with the Addiction Centre in Malmö University Hospital from 1993 to 1997 inclusive were investigated. Drug abuse was investigated blindly in the case records and related to the cause of death in 387 subjects.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Every substance apart from alcohol used previously in life added to the risk of unnatural death in a linear way. There were independent increased risks of fatal heroin overdoses or undetermined suicide. Death by suicide and violent death were unrelated to additional abuse.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The number of drugs used was related to an increased risk of unnatural death by undetermined suicide (mainly fatal intoxications) and heroin overdose.</p

Year one teachers' views on parental involvement in children's early learning of number: an English case study.

In this paper we present results of an interview study of English teachers’ views on parental involvement in year one children’s learning of number. Transcripts were subjected to a process of constant comparison that, in addition to highlighting teachers’ generally positive perspectives, yielded two broad categories of parental. Firstly, there were informal involvements like conveying positive messages about mathematics at home and drawing children’s attention to the everyday existence of mathematics through games and household activities. Secondly, there were formal involvements which included systematized mechanisms initiated by schools in which parents are expected to participate. Within both categorisations could be found positive and negative perceptions as well as elements of inconsistency